Still interested, though I must inform right now that in a week, my posting speed will be dropped tremendously, ranging from 1 post/3 days to 1 post/2 weeks, reason being that my mandatory military service begins then (yes, in Finland, every male capable of must go trough defense force training or take up civil service instead, and both take a lot of your time).

You know, I had intended to simply close registration during the game, and only allow registration at certain stages of the game, but so far, two players have failed to respond within a bearable time and now I'm am faced with only two players who have responded to this thread.

I'd say this was stillborn, and a failure. And I've got three choices about it. Either I make a quickfix and allow soulcode to be in, continue with the original rp plan despite the lack of people, or do a reboot.

I think it would be a little sad to just leave out the new ones when there's only two of us left. It would be hard to rp when the others have just disappeared but this isn't all that surprising for a slow moving game especially when it's just starting up.

To be honest I'll be running off to explore the area on my next post whatever is chosen in the end. Even if we restart I vote for a quick fix and have a few suggestions for dealing with the problem of disappearing players and new ones. (They've probably already occurred to you but I'm in a writing mood)

(Apologies for the upcoming wall of text)

How about this for a policy: If the players aren't responding their places should be filled. Perhaps you could let another group join when a group/too many groups drop(s) out as the exception to the fixed point joining rule you mentioned? If many drop out at once it can become hard to continue. It won't be hard to jump in at this point but as the game goes on it will be more of a problem. If a way to deal with it can be found now without restarting every time that would be ideal. Just continuing and with groups just stopping every time seems awkward and might spoil things once the game gets up and running. An agreed way on how to deal with the new rper jumping in and the lost rper would have to be made. Easier to do if the rper that is leaving announces it but as that can't necessarily be counted on...

Of course there would have to be a way of dealing with the "lost" characters and groups in a sensible way. Perhaps they break up when a leader dies and join/form other groups, perhaps their leader(s) fell from grace within their own group and a new leader comes into power which might give them the opportunity of a group comeback, or if the new leader is designed by the new player then the group could carry on as something new with a new name (drow at least are known for this). Possibly their group could be kept (partially) intact maybe even as background NPC's; there but not particularly active, to keep things from becoming unbalanced perhaps a mix of all of those for different circumstances. I can understand that that might be a bit too much work. Of course killing them all off would be easier but would lead to my willing suspension of disbelief being stretched to breaking point. For instance: problems of potentially massive population drops that can't easily be recovered. Or well established, educated groups just disappearing for no logical reason.

If they were to break up mid game and form a new group then the new member could design that group (of the same race at very least) that evolved from the remnants of the old, even with a radical new way of thinking. Of course such a case would probably require a time lapse and they might not just be able to jump in as easily. To make the transition smoother they might describe in the rp of how the group/clan is forming for a (few) post(s). Such as a first post of an individual appearing and rallying people towards her/him or an acceptance by the other leaders as an "equal" or at least as a leader in their own right.Of course I'd imagine a newly appearing group would probably wish to describe what they've been doing all this time anyway.

If you've read all this thank you for putting up with my rambling this long.This is getting way ahead of everything. I just like new projects and idea's like this and somehow the options just set me off. I think about things too much sometimes. I have a lot more thoughts but I will save them for another time.